Sam Raimi is back! With a new movie. Not one of his best, but hey – we got a new Sam Raimi movie. SEND HELP was brought to him by screenwriters Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (FREDDY VS. JASON, FRIDAY THE 13TH 2009), but it follows part of the DRAG ME TO HELL template in that it’s about a timid woman who doesn’t fit in and gets overlooked and mistreated by the sexist assholes at her corporate job, then finds her inner viciousness to be able to compete with them. A difference is that in the earlier film the horror scenario comes as punishment for the shitty thing she does to get ahead. This one is about how getting stranded on an island with her asshole boss becomes her opportunity to unleash her mean side.
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams, PASSION) has worked for seven years as a corporate strategist, though her new boss thinks she’s an accountant. The previous CEO promised her a promotion to vice president, but then he died and his son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien, AMERICAN ASSASSIN) took over. To Linda’s shock he gives the promotion to Donovan (Xavier Samuel, THE LOVED ONES, Bernard Rose’s FRANKENSTEIN), an idiotic Patrick Bateman type who’s pretty new there, steals credit for her work and happens to have been Bradley’s frat brother.
Although this is edited by Raimi’s long time collaborator Bob Murawski it feels like a slower pace than he usually prefers, and in particular the awkward workplace section is unusually drawn out. Its humor is maybe sort of in the oddball mode of Aunt May trying to get the free toaster in SPIDER-MAN 2, but to me not nearly as funny. Linda is cartoonishly nerdy in obvious ways (ugly clothes, bad complexion), random ways (for some reason brags about her ugly old shoes, spends her evenings talking to a bird), and gross ways (doesn’t know she has a chunk of tunafish on her face when she’s delusionally trying to charm the new boss). The latter at least inspires some trademark Bill Pope camera show-offery (one of the parts that’s probly pretty cool in the 3D version).
I didn’t even think about that Raimi already directed McAdams in DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. Instead I thought it was cool that she has starred in movies directed by Wes Craven and Sam Raimi, both thrillers involving airplanes. I think Craven’s movie was a little more of a natural fit for her because it starts like a romantic lead and then subverts that. Here it starts off with her already playing against type as a nerd, before subverting the nerd.
Of course I side with poor mistreated Linda, but the movie really tests the limits of how unappealing you can get away with making your underdog hero. These guys at the office are horrible, and it’s painful to watch her repeatedly humiliate herself in front of them. I do really like the touch that although the men definitely treat her that way because she’s a woman it’s clear that the women there don’t like her either. When she tries to bond with co-worker River (Emma Raimi) her joke completely bombs and River gives her a withering “why are you talking to me” look.
Bradley wants to transfer Linda to a different office, but a senior executive (Dennis Haysbert, SUTURE, basically a cameo) convinces him they need her on a trip to Bangkok to secure a merger. Then their private jet malfunctions and crashes near a small island near Thailand. Linda survives, finds Bradley washed up on shore with a leg injury, builds a shelter for him, brings him food and water. I guess in the end they both got transferred to a different office.
There’s obviously a MISERY aspect to it, but maybe also THE REF? Oh, actually it’s just a less class conscious take on the last part of TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, isn’t it? Bradley can’t walk or do anything, Linda saved him and is keeping him alive, but he feels perfectly comfortable criticizing her, talking down to her, putting her forgiveness and kindness to the test. As he heals there’s a comical back and forth where he gets mad and tries to strike out on his own but is clearly out of his element. He can barely tie two palm leaves together but she’s weaving beautiful hats and thatched roofs, catching and cooking fish, eventually preparing elaborate dishes of sushi, caviar and fresh mango, laid out beautifully. Presentation is very important for castaway meals.
I particularly love the detail that she carved her name into the bamboo cup she drinks water out of. I don’t know if that’s like having a customized mug or like writing your name on a plastic cup at a party, but either way it’s great. Also it’s a good twist on the mousy-girl-lets-her-hair-down-and-she’s-gorgeous cliche that being stranded on an island and having to kill animals to survive makes Linda start to look hot. Bradley even admits it.
I did think it was too on-the-nose that the reason she’s so good at this is because she’s really into Survivor. I mean maybe if it was the band Survivor it would be cool, but this is the reality show. She watches the show with her bird at the beginning, and when the accident happens the men on the jet are making fun of her Survivor audition video. (Good font choices on the video, by the way.) It seems kind of “I learned to shoot from playing Xbox“ to me. And honestly if she learned everything she knows from Survivor that’s another reason why if there were any cool people at work they wouldn’t want to hang out with her either.
For me there are many things in this movie that just don’t click, but then there are those stretches of pure Raimi exhilaration. It’s not like FOR LOVE OF THE GAME where nobody would guess it was a Raimi movie. There’s plenty of goofy humor, several acts of violence that go the extra mile to spookablast you in the face, a little bit of camera fun, a good reference to Bruce Campbell that I won’t give away. And he’s got the band back together – Murawski, Pope, even composer Danny Elfman (despite allegations).
The first out loud laugh for me and others at the 2 pm Thursday matinee was during the plane crash. I’d noticed Donovan’s penchant for wearing suspenders, wondered if it was a little bit dated fashion, maybe a reference to OFFICE SPACE, turns out to be set up for spectacular Raimi slapstick. Another obvious highlight is when Linda decides to hunt a wild boar, a scene that follows Raimi’s “you must taste blood to be a man” dictum both literally and figuratively. Killing it takes longer than it would in most movies and the thing definitely pukes more blood in her face than I expected.
So I was entertained, but I’m afraid I struggled with some of the turns it takes. It starts out fitting into an obvious, agreeable theme: Linda is smarter and harder working than everyone around her, but they pass her by because she’s a woman and a little older and socially awkward. Now in this castaway situation the tables have turned, she has all the power over her asshole boss, and we enjoy seeing his comeuppance, maybe even seeing her abuse that power a little.
Okay. And then there’s a funny/uncomfortable twist in that (twist spoiler) Linda is so much better at and happier in this island life that she’s clearly resisting, even purposely avoiding, chances to get rescued. Eventually, like Bill Paxton in A SIMPLE PLAN, her desperation leads to crossing a line into unforgivable immorality. (SPOILER: She straight up murders two totally innocent people!)
A part of me enjoys how upsetting this is, how it messes with me by asking me to consider switching my sympathies to Bradley, a guy who absolutely sucks, who I definitely don’t have to hand it to, even though it’s now known that he (like Linda) has been a victim of abuse. But another part of me can’t help but ask what this is saying. That actually if you think about it the mistreated workers are worse than their shithead nepo-baby overlords? Or at least that they’re similarly bad? A both sides situation? Maybe it’s being subversive, taking a softball underdog formula and turning it on its head. But I just don’t think that’s one that needs to be subverted, personally.
Now, I’m not saying that a protagonist needs to be moral, or even likable. I don’t believe that at all. Maybe the main thing I love about DRAG ME TO HELL is that the main character Christine is very flawed. She does the wrong thing to impress her boss at work, and suffers a curse for it. Then, in trying to break the curse, she repeatedly does more wrong things, up to and including (SPOILER FOR DRAG ME TO HELL) when she kills a kitten. Maybe SEND HELP is trying to make the same move here, but the context is very different. Not only is the body count higher, but she’s just trying to prolong an unnatural living situation, as opposed to trying to avoid literally burning in hell.
And on second thought maybe it does work better for characters to be “likable” despite their flaws. You could describe DRAG ME TO HELL and SEND HELP both as mean, but they’re mean in different ways. DRAG ME TO HELL is mean because it punishes Christine so harshly for her sins, SEND HELP is mean because it lets Linda turn into a monster and get away with it. I have so much sympathy for Christine, even after she’s crossed those moral lines. There’s something very humane about that. People are flawed, you can still sympathize with them. But Linda I guess I don’t really like that much, I don’t really sympathize with her as much as feel sorry for her, and then she makes a strong case that I shouldn’t even do that.
I do think this character is meant to be relatable, and maybe there’s just some specific charisma thing I’m not getting here that I need for that to work on me. It’s not about virtue. Pearl in the movie PEARL is so much crazier and more evil than Linda, and I still feel the instinct to defend that messy bitch. She’s just trying to stand up for herself!
So for me it really felt like Raimi was blowing it in that last act. But it’s pretty funny to watch these two beat the living shit out of each other, and then all the sudden they pull off an ending that made me laugh, made me mostly accept all that. Like a gymnast landing wobbly but miraculously staying upright. Almost more impressive than landing neatly.
I wish I loved this like I do most of Raimi’s movies. Other people seem to, so don’t let me scare you off. Maybe it will grow on me.
February 2nd, 2026 at 7:31 am
It kind of feels like the bloat in the middle is trying to wedge in that she was always messed up and already has some blood on her hands beyond what happened on the plane (I wouldn’t bet against that drunken confession night being the reshoots in the Dominican; it’s dark and kind of shot in a way that it doesn’t necessarily have to match the other beach perfectly), but it’s kind of wobbly.